Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro has just unveiled a new teleoperated android: a strange robotic creature called the Telenoid R1.

Ishiguro, a professor at Osaka University, is famous for creating humanlike androids designed to "transmit the presence" of people to a distant place. His previous remote controlled androids include a robot replica of himself that he named Geminoid HI-1 and a smiling female android called the Geminoid F.

But the new Telenoid R1 robot is quite different. The previous androids had lifelike appearances, every detail trying to reproduce the features of a real person. The Telenoid has a minimalistic design. The size of small child, it has a soft torso with a bald head, a doll-like face, and stumps in place of limbs. It looks like an overgrown fetus.

Ishiguro and his collaborators say the idea was to create a teleoperated robot that could appear male or female, old or young, and that could be easily transported. The new design pushes the envelope of human-robot interaction, and Ishiguro is certainly not afraid of exploring the depths of the uncanny valley.

The researchers, who demonstrated the robot today at a press conference in Osaka, hope it will be used as a new communication device, with applications in remote work, remote education, and elderly care. The goal of the project, a collaboration between Osaka University and Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, known as ATR, is to investigate the essential elements for representing and transmitting humanlike presence.